We had a great time making Sock Snowmen to complete our month of Winter. This was a somewhat more complicated project but the kids did great waiting their turn to measure rice into their sock to create their snowman. They each got to find a stick outside for his arms, and helped to draw the faces and stick on the buttons to the front. 
We took Wax paper cut to about the size of each child's foot and with bare-feet the wax paper sticks and result was "ice-skating" in-doors. With our mostly tiled preschool room we had to play it safe and go one child at a time on the rugs. But in a fully carpeted room this is a lot of fun to do at home. Our composer of the month was Pachelbel so we talked about waltzing (how it is a smooth dance) and then each child got to "ice-waltz" to Pachelbel's Cannon. I loved all the creative "moves"!
I promise he really was happy about this costume! 
Dressing up is always a hit at Free Play time but this particular day was particularly cute b/c they all dressed up at the same time and had an elaborate game going on. The only child not dressed up was orchestrating the whole scene and she was more like the costume designer picking out outfits for everyone, zipping them up, etc etc. So cute!
In January we read "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats and we learned about his style of illustration. We discussed how he uses watercolors to paint pieces of paper and then uses a collage technique to create the pictures in his book. We decided to try this out ourselves. First the kids painted paper using watercolor (some of the kids went for a more abstract approach...this was popular with the younger crowd and some chose to paint people and other things to create a whole scene). We let them dry and then the following preschool day they kids helpe to cut and rip up the paintings during our centers and then they used the cut-up pieces to make their own collage. I think my favorite part was the interpretation of their collage. We have such an imaginative class!
